


your heart is there (it's in your hands)

by astrolesbian



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, THE BOY DESERVES A HUG! AND A WARM BATH! AND SLEEP!, takes place directly after 'bubbled', this is like........angst city
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 11:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7755778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrolesbian/pseuds/astrolesbian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I want to go home,” Steven says, wobbling on legs that are suddenly made of spaghetti. Garnet lifts him up, easily, shifting him onto her hip as if he’s much younger than he is, and nods, smoothing a hand over his hair. He lets his head fall onto her shoulder, and doesn’t mind her treating him like a kid, at least this once. He closes his eyes, and breathes in the smell of her, like cinnamon and ozone. He thinks it’d be an awful smell, or at least a weird one, if it wasn’t Garnet. Since it is, it just smells like being safe. Like being home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your heart is there (it's in your hands)

**Author's Note:**

> steven just went through so much in these past few episodes.........i just want him to be okay......my definition of 'okay' is 'crying a lot and getting it all off your chest', but i digress
> 
> hope this isn't too ooc or anything! this is my first time trying out su fic so let me know
> 
> (title from various storms & saints by florence + the machine)

“I want to go home,” Steven says, in the ship, after the Gems pulled him out of empty space, after Garnet told him about Mom, after all the fuss is over, wobbling on legs that are suddenly made of spaghetti. Garnet lifts him up, easily, shifting him onto her hip as if he’s much younger than he is, and nods, smoothing a hand over his hair. He lets his head fall onto her shoulder, and doesn’t mind her treating him like a kid, at least this once. He closes his eyes, and breathes in the smell of her, like cinnamon and ozone. He thinks it’d be an awful smell, or at least a weird one, if it wasn’t Garnet. Since it is, it just smells like being safe. Like being home.

“I’m tired,” he says, and she hushes him, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“I know,” she says. “We’ll be home soon. You can go to bed. That sound good?”

“He ought to eat something first,” Pearl cuts in, anxiously. “And take a bath -- he hasn’t had one.”

“He doesn’t need a _bath,_ ” Amethyst objects. “He’s clean, he smells fine. He smells like he always smells.”

“I wasn’t saying he smelled!” Pearl says, her eyes wide. “I just -- he’s been floating around in space, he’s probably so cold -- human bodies aren’t made for that!”

“I don’t _have_ a human body,” Steven says. “Not exactly.”

“Thank the stars,” Pearl says, a bit snappishly, “or else you’d probably be --”

She cuts herself off, and doesn’t say _dead,_ but Steven shudders all over anyway, because it’s implied. She looks sorry, the moment she says it.

“Oh, Steven,” she says, and looks like she aches to run over and hold him, except that she can’t, because she’s flying the ship. “I’m sorry, I didn’t --”

“It’s okay,” Steven says, and Garnet rubs his back. He wonders what they would have done, to find him out there in space. He wonders if they ever would have given up someday, assumed he was gone --

“Never,” Garnet says, softly. “We would have looked for you forever.”

“Really?” he asks, and part of him feels like -- like this isn’t fair, like it’s not fair to ask the Crystal Gems to sit around and look for him for the rest of their very long lives. Another part of him, though, a much more scared part, just wants the confirmation that wherever he goes, they will find him, and bring him home.

Garnet holds him tighter, suddenly, and he feels even worse for asking. “Oh, Steven,” she says. “Of course.” She presses her face into his hair, and Gems don’t have lungs or anything like that, but Steven could swear she breathes in, like she’s reassuring herself he’s there, which makes him just -- feel all cruddy, all over again.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, through a sudden lump in his throat, and she pulls back in shock, looking at him. “I must have scared you guys so bad, I’m so sorry --”

“ _Steven_ ,” she says, but the words just keep spilling out of him, along with the tears, and all the other cruddy stuff he’s tried not to think about this week.

“And I poofed Bismuth, and she was your friend -- and Jasper got corrupted and I couldn’t help her -- and I opened the door on the moon base and I let all the Rubies out and they’re all floating out there now and I feel so _bad,_ I don’t want to hurt anybody, I swear, but it just keeps _happening_ and I can’t do any of this _right_ and --”

Garnet sits down hard onto a chair, shifting him off her hip and into her lap, holding him close, rubbing his back as he cries. Pearl and Amethyst are looking over, he’s sure, and he feels like a baby for crying, and sorry for not being strong enough to do this -- or at least strong enough to make it home to his bed before he cries.

“I’m trying so hard,” he gulps, and wipes at his nose but only ends up spreading the snot around on his face, which, _gross_ . “I’m trying really really hard but it’s so _tough_ and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do any of this right and sometimes I think you guys would have been better off if Mom just never had me --”

“ _No,_ ” Garnet says, so fiercely that it shocks him into silence, into looking up. “ _Never_ say that, Steven.”

She holds his face between her palms, and her visor has vanished sometime in the past couple minutes, and he can see that there are tears gathering in her eyes.

“Never even _think_ that,” and he starts to cry again.

“I’m _sorry,_ ” he wails, like a little kid, wrapping his arms around her middle. Amethyst makes a noise like she’s crying, too, and trying to stop herself, and he can feel another pair of arms wrapped around him, and a lot of hair, too, so. Probably Amethyst.

“We would never trade you for anything,” Garnet murmurs. “We love you, Steven.”

And he keeps crying, he can’t help it, even though they love him, even though he’s here on this ship, because he can still feel the cold of space all around him, and it’s so _scary._

“I thought I was gonna --” and he can’t finish the sentence. He _can’t._

Garnet presses a kiss into his hair. “Never,” she says. “Not while I’m around.”

“I was so cold,” he says, cut off with a hiccup. “And I was so _scared._ ”

“You’re okay now, little man,” Amethyst says. “We got you. You’re okay.”

It’s good to hear it, out loud, and his crying starts to slow, fading into hiccups and then into nothing, until he just feels tired and empty and cold, even though Amethyst’s hair is pretty much acting like a blanket as she hugs him.

“Don’t feel all bad and stuff,” Amethyst says, finally, trying to smile at him. “I’m s’posed to be the one who does that.”

The ship lands with a shudder on the ground, and Steven can hear Pearl getting up and walking over, and he squeezes his eyes shut, because she’s probably going to cry and hug him and he knows, he _knows_ it means she loves him, and she cares, and he loves her too, he just -- right now, he thinks he _can’t_ \--

Instead, he feels her hand on his forehead, just brushing back his hair. When he looks up at her, there are tears brimming in her eyes, but she doesn’t move to hug him like Garnet and Amethyst are doing, and he thinks _of course,_ because Pearl of all people understands what it’s like to not want to be touched too much when you’re sad.

“Oh, Steven,” Pearl says, and her knuckles slide across his cheek, and then pull away. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” he asks, because he’s the one that just freakin’ _cried_ all over everything.

She smiles sadly at him. “That I might have ever made you feel like I’d trade you, for _anything_ .” She looks at him, and he looks back, and her eyes are teary but unwavering, honest. “That any of us might have. We love you more than _anything_.”

She straightens up, and wipes at her eyes, and smiles. “Come inside,” she says. “You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten something and had a bath. We can all talk, and then you can go to sleep.”

He nods, and Garnet stands, taking him with her.

 

The bath warms him up. He hasn’t taken a bath in a while -- they’re more helpful for playing than actually getting clean, and he’s been getting covered with goop pretty often lately -- but it’s nice to sit in a pile of bubbles and hot water and get warm.

(He doesn’t stop shivering for ten minutes, but he _does_ stop. It just takes a while.)

He builds himself a beard out of bubbles like his dad’s, and laughs shakily when he catches his reflection in the water.

(He thinks he’s going to be okay.)

 

He climbs out of the bath and gets dressed, in the flannel pyjamas he’s nearly outgrown, the ones with bears on them. The ones he looked at last week when he was folding them and thought they were for little kids. He sure doesn’t think that now.

The gems are waiting for him at the kitchen counter, and there’s a mug of something warm sitting in front of the only empty stool, and Pearl is making something on the stove. It looks like grilled cheese. His stomach growls, and he slides onto the stool, between Garnet and Amethyst.

“Can I have one too?” Amethyst asks, grinning at Pearl and batting her eyes. Trying to break the tension, maybe, what little there is to break. (Amethyst doesn’t do well with even a little tension.)

Pearl rolls her eyes, but gets out more bread and cheese. “Are you feeling better, Steven?” she asks, anxiously, pressing her hand to his forehead as if to check for fever.

He nods, trying not to dislodge her hand. “I’m better now.”

She breathes out, long and slow, and maybe she can see in his eyes that he really, really wants the hug she didn’t give him earlier because she sets the spatula down, crosses over to his side of the counter, and wraps him in a tight hug. He melts into it, hugging her back, pressing his face into her shoulder and trying not to cry again at how good it feels to be hugged, after how lonely he felt out in space, and after how bad he felt earlier (and still feels now, let’s be honest) about still being terrible at this whole Crystal Gem thing.

“Sorry I cried,” he mumbles.

“Now, Steven, don’t be ridiculous,” Pearl says, in her lecture voice. “If _I_ apologized to all of you every time I was sad about something we’d never get anything done. We don’t hold you to standards we can’t even follow ourselves.” Her tone softened. “We’re your family. You can always tell us anything, and that includes being sad. Or worried, or anything besides that.”

“You don’t tell us, every time,” he says, mostly to be contrary, because he’s not done feeling bad about himself yet. She just smiles, albeit sadly.

“I’m working on that,” she says, and gives him a final squeeze before letting go and looking at the grilled cheese. “Oh, _drat,_ it’s burnt. Amethyst, you can have this one.”

“Yummm,” Amethyst says. “Charred cheese, my _favorite_.”

Pearl wrinkles her nose at her and turns back to Steven. “Have some hot chocolate, before it gets cold.”

He sips. It’s good.

“I made it,” Garnet says, quietly.

He smiles at her. “Thanks.”

She runs her fingers through his hair, and smiles back.

“Steven,” she starts, and he shakes his head.

“Before you say it,” he says. “I -- I know you guys love me. If I didn’t know that I wouldn’t -- I mean, like, if I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t be happy that much, you know? This is coming out wrong,” he adds, frustrated, setting his mug of hot chocolate down.

“The thing is, I know you guys love me, and I love you too, I love you so much, that’s not the problem here, really, I just don’t -- I don’t know how good at all this I am. I know I’m still learning, kind of, but it seems like everytime I try to do something it turns out to be a huge mistake. Like when I poofed Bismuth, I -- maybe she was right? Mom shattered Pink Diamond, right, so maybe Bismuth was right? About her weapon? And Jasper -- maybe she was wrong, but maybe I still could have helped her somehow -- I don’t _know,_ ” he says. “There’s so much I don’t know. And Mom knew all of it. Mom would have made the right choices. I know it’s not a question of -- of who you love more, because I know you love both of us so much, but I -- I don’t know the things she knew. I can’t make the right choices.”

He looks down at his hands. “And I’m so scared that someday I’m gonna make a choice that hurts one of you. You could have gotten flung out into space today, just as easy as me. I don’t know what I’d do if that -- if that happened.”

“Oh, Steven,” Garnet says, and takes his hands in hers. “Listen to me. No one is ever able to make all the right choices. You can’t. We can’t. Rose certainly couldn’t.”

He looks up at her.

“If she were here, she would be making her own mistakes. Maybe she wouldn’t have made the same mistakes you made, or the same mistakes we made, but she would have made mistakes. A _lot_ of them.”

She squeezes his hands, and smiles.

“I promise you, Steven, you’re not bad at this. You made friends with Peridot and Lapis. If it had been up to me, the two of them would have stayed poofed, and _that_ would have been a mistake.”

“Yeah,” Amethyst chimes in. “And you totally tried to help Centipeedle and got her back her ship and junk! I bet she’s way happier now cause of you.”

“And you’ve helped all of us,” Pearl says, softly, as she’s cutting his grilled cheese into triangles. “More than you know, I think.”

“You’re doing _fine,_ ” Garnet says. “Better than fine. Amazing.”

Steven attempts to wipe away the tears in his eyes without the Gems noticing. “You guys,” he says, and then stops, and smiles. “Thanks.”

“We believe in you,” Garnet says simply. Then she smiles, and ruffles his hair. “Now eat your sandwich.”

He grins back, and takes a bite.

“Thanks,” he says again, even though he doesn’t really need to. But it’s for everything, really. For the hot chocolate and the grilled cheese and for reassuring him and for loving him, no matter what.

“Aw, Steven,” Amethyst says, and holds her hand out for a fist bump, her eyes soft. “No big deal. That’s what we’re here for.”

 

Lion curls up on the floor next to his bed, close enough for Steven to hold onto his mane as he sleeps. He only does this when he’s feeling particularly nice, so Steven makes sure to give him an extra belly scratch as a thank you.

Pearl is cleaning up the kitchen, having already kissed him goodnight and given him another tight hug, and Garnet is outside with the ship, having done the same, so Amethyst is the one who’s tucking him in, strangely quiet as she does so.

“It wasn’t all bad, was it?” she asks. “The last couple days, I mean.”

“No,” Steven says, and yawns. “Of course not.”

“Smokey was good,” and she says it like she’s testing it out, like she’s afraid he’ll say that Smokey _wasn’t,_ and his heart hurts a little.

“Smokey was _awesome,_ ” he says. “We should show Garnet and Pearl tomorrow. They’ll love it. That we can fuse, I mean.”

Amethyst grins, and hugs him, hard and sudden. “I love ya, Steven,” she says. “Sleep well.”

“Love you too,” he says sleepily, hugging her back. “Tomorrow. I promise. It’ll be great.”

“For sure,” she says, gently, and watches him lay down. She brushes the hair off his face and grins. “Get some sleep, bud.”

“Tomorrow,” he says, for the third time, and shuts his eyes.

He falls asleep smiling.

 


End file.
